Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 186

Mainstream Media on March for Life

This just in from the mainstream media: Please take note that nothing is happening in Washington DC on Wednesday. I repeat. Nothing is happening in Washington DC on Wednesday. No protests are planned except a very small anti-choice protest in which perhaps a dozen crazy old women will be holding signs and screaming abuse. There [Read More...]

I Don’t Want to Go to Church!

When I was a high school chaplain I had a set of parents fix an appointment to see me. They turned up on time. Dad was a moderately successful business man. Mom was well turned out. Just proper. Nice and tidy neat and together suburban Protestant couple who had chosen to sent their tenth grader [Read More...]

Why I Love Trad Catholics

Yet again in the blogosphere there have been some storms about traditionalist Catholics. “Was Michael Voris attacked by this person or that person? We must rally to his defense!” “Is Michael Voris a real traditionalist or not?” “Did Pope Francis attack traditionalists by calling them ‘self absorbed,  promethean, neo pelagians?” While I have criticized certain [Read More...]

Talking about Wave Walking

How is the gospel best spread? By talking about how the faith has changed you. It is by telling faith stories. It is by sharing the amazing, simple and real experiences of the faith. It is talking about wave walking. Sherry Weddell emphasizes this in her important book Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and [Read More...]

On the Tyranny of Sentimentalism

Here is my latest article for The Imaginative Conservative, which criticizes what might some call “bleedin’ heart liberalism”. Sentimentality is emotion that has been educated by shallow educational principles, ill thought out parental controls, social expectations, peer pressure, the popular press, and the opinions and common assumptions of the day. It is this sentimentalism which [Read More...]

Let the Little Children Come to Me

Here is my latest article for Aleteia in which I summarize Pope Francis’ pro life message this week. Over the last week, we have seen the Pope’s continued emphasis on the preciousness of children and the sanctity of life. On Sunday’s celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, the Sistine Chapel was full for the [Read More...]

Atheist Parents Catholic Child

Deacon Kandra links to this article from London’s Guardian newspaper (London papers are the best) which is a frank article by an atheist father whose daughter has chosen to be baptized. Our little girl, however, has made a life-defining decision by herself. I couldn’t be more proud of her. But I cannot deny that what she [Read More...]

Pearce on Wells and the Chesterbelloc

Joseph Pearce in good form here writing about H.G.Wells’ arguments with Hilaire Belloc and G.K.Chesterton. Wells had written his progressivist Outline of History and Belloc attacked with scorn and ridicule. Chesterton attacked with the far more terrible weapon of humor and fun. Belloc, with his customary bellicosity, was merciless in his attacks on Wells’s scholarship and [Read More...]

Church? I Haven’t Been to Church in Fifty Years

One of the sweet things about being a priest is being able to minister at a person’s deathbed. The veil between this world and the next is very thin at that point, and you can see so much. When I say you can “see” so much what I mean is that so much is revealed. [Read More...]

Who Am I to Judge?

If any off the cuff remark is ever destined to haunt the undisciplined public figure who let it fly it will be Pope Francis’ now famous comment about a homosexual–”Who am I to judge?” So an American state legislator quotes the pope to argue for same sex marriage, and now Catholic high school students are [Read More...]